was before remarked, they virtually made it their principle to have no established system, and they are therefore justly classed by Warburton with professed Pyrrhonists.

The Peripatetics by no means uniformly adhered to the tenets of their master, and one of them, Strato Lampsacenus, is distinguished for having plunged into a depth of atheism beyond that of any other philosophical teacher, and to have inculcated more degrading notions respecting the Deity than those of the Stoics; for he maintained that there was no other God than a kind of plastic life in nature, without sense or consciousness. The Stoics, like Strato, considered God and matter to form one nature inseparably united, but they maintained the existence (if such a difference between these two forms of atheism can clearly be conceived) of a kind of divine reason,

X

Opinabor was their professed principle: Quæro enim, quid sit, quod comprehendi possit-Incognito nimirum assentiar, id est, opinabor. Cic. Academ. Quæst. lib. iv. 35.

y A short account of Strato's life, but not of his doctrines, is given in Diog. Laërt. and his works also are enumerated: he succeeded Theophrastus in his school, and had been preceptor to Ptolemy Philadelphus, Diog. Laërt. p. 186. He is described by St. Augustine as something between an atheist and a theist. For his opinions, vide Cudworth, lib. i. cap. 3. sect. 4. p. 107. Brucker, pars ii. lib. ii. cap. 7. pp. 845-847. Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. i. cap. 13. Academ. Quæst. lib. i. cap. 9. lib. iv. cap. 38.

divina ratio toti mundo insita, while their rivals above alluded to allowed the divinity of plastic force only. The distinction must be considered more verbal than real a, if we remember that the god of the Stoics, notwithstanding the magnificent language in which they sometimes extol him, was corporeal made up of fire and liquid ether, finite, inseparably united to matter, and subject to its control, without free-will, and apparently without personality. They taught that the soul of man was a part of the divine essence, a πνεῦμα ἔνθερμον, that it partook of the same qualities, was an emanation from it, and, after the destined period, would be resolved into it, when the eternal law of fate,

z Zeno autem naturalem legem divinam esse censet. Aliis autem libris rationem quandam, per omnem naturam rerum pertinentem ut divinam esse affectam (divina vi affectam) putat. Cicero, de Natura Deorum, lib. i. cap. 14. ratione mundus utitur. Animans est mundus composque rationis. lib. ii. cap. 8.

a Brucker, pars ii. lib. ii. cap. 9. p. 937. Tennemann, Stoiker, s. 121. Diog. Laërt. lib. vii. De Natura Deorum, Cicero, lib. i. lib. ii. cap. 14, 15. Academ. Quæst. lib. iv. cap. 41. Cudworth, lib. i. cap. 4. p. 419. Eusebius, Præparat. Evangel. lib. xv. cap. 15, 16. S. Epiphanii Responsio ad Epist. Acacii et Pauli, p. 7. Adv. Hæreses. lib. i. 5.

b Diog. Laërt. lib. vii. p. 291.

с

c Αρέσκει δὲ τοῖς πρεσβυτατοῖς τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς αἱρέσεως ταύτης ἐξαεροῦ σθαι πάντα κατὰ περιόδους τινὰς τὰς μέγιστας εἰς πῦρ αἰθερῶδες ἀναλυομévwv návτwv. Eusebius, Præp. Evangel. lib. xv. cap. 18. Idem

from similar principles, would again produce similar combinations; a new universe would arise from its elementary fire, destined to become in the developement of all its successive phenomena, physical and moral, whether trifling or important, the exact counterpart of the old: from the eruption of volcanoes, or the convulsion of empires, to the smallest blade of grass, and the most minute accident in the character and fortunes of every individual that before existed.

a The opinions of Epicurus are too well known to require examination. The Romans were copyists of the Greek philosophers, rather than inventors of independent systems, and in the interpretation of their sentiments they are frequently superficial, and not always to be relied on. In the time of Cicero the philosophy of Epicurus, of the Stoics, and of the old and new Academy, was most studied. Cicero himself, next to the works of the new Academy, his own sect, was most conversant in the writings of the Stoics. In speaking of Aristotle he observes, that his philosophy was little read even by the learned. It appears that those cap. 19. Diog. Laërt. lib. vii. p. 284. edit. 1570. Warburton, book iii. sect. 3. vol. ii. p. 72. Vide also Origen contra Celsum, lib. v. p. 244, 245. edit. Spencer. 1677. Even Socrates's worn out clothes were to appear again in this regeneration. d Cicero de Natura Deorum lib. i.

e Rhetor autem ille magnus hæc Aristotelica se ignorare re

Romans in general who believed in a supreme Deity identified him with the Soul of the universe. f Varro undoubtedly had no other notion of Jupiter, and he may be considered as representing the principles prevalent in his time. The later Platonists of the school of Ammonius were lost in the dreams of oriental speculation. Plotinus, like Spinoza, afterwards seems to have maintained that God was no existence himself, but the cause of all existence, and that matter, soul, and God were inseparable, and had been so from all eternity. It might be a subject of curious investigation to fol

spondit. Quod quidem minime sum admiratus eum philosophum rhetori non esse cognitum, qui ab ipsis philosophis, præter admodum paucos, ignoraretur. Topica, cap. 1.

f Dicit ergo Varro adhuc de naturali theologia præloquens, Deum se arbitrari esse Animam Mundi quam Græci vocant Kóμ et hunc ipsum mundum esse Deum. Augustin. Civ. Dei, lib. vii. cap. 6.

A very interesting account of the theology of Varro is given in Dr. Ireland's learned treatise on Paganism and Christianity compared, chap. 5.

g Plotinus's notion in lib. ix. Ennead. 6. so far as an ordinary mind may be permitted to approach such sublime abstractions, appears to be, that the first original principle is Nothing, yet the cause of all things; having neither quantity nor quality; neither soul nor reason; is neither in motion nor in tranquillity; is neither unity nor number; neither in space nor in time; without thought or will; yet the act of thinking, and the cause of all thought; the smallest, yet the largest; the good, the perfect.

Εἶ νὴ τὸν Ἑρμῆν· ὅτι λέγεις δ ̓ οὐ μανθάνω.

low up the question through the philosophical sects of more modern times, to examine how far the system of Spinoza accords with the doctrine taught in some of the ancient schools, and to pursue the inquiry even to our own day, through the most recent philosophical systems, and ascertain to what extent the charge of pantheism is justly to be imputed to them. But a superficial view of such subjects seldom fails to produce or strengthen erroneous opinions, and an accurate research would require the labours of a life.

It appears then, that, of the different schools of antiquity, some held the soul of the world to be the chief God, some a secondary Deity; of the former, some believed the universal Soul to pass through matter unmixed, some to be united and form only one nature with it; and of these again, some considered the corporeal Deity to be a kind of divine reason without personality, others a species of vegetative life, called the plastic force of nature. Is it too much to infer, from an examination of such unintelligible theories', that the inventors and supporters had no clear conceptions of their own meaning, and that principles like these

h Die neueste philosophie nähert sich dem system des Spinoza von mehreren Seiten an. Tennemann, art. Spinoza.

i Exposui fere non philosophorum judicia sed delirantium somnia. Cicero de Natura Deorum lib. i. cap. 16.